VII. Our Earthuman Ascent: A Major Evolutionary Transition in Twindividuality

3. Planetary Physiosphere: Anatomics, Economics, Urbanomics

Riberio, Fabiano and Diego Rybski. Mathematical Models to Explain the Origin of Urban Scaling Laws. arXiv:2111.08365. Federal University of Lavras, Brazil and Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research Germany systems ecologists enter more views about how to appreciation these prevalent human habitations altogether as recurrent complex network emergences.

The quest for a theory of cities that could offer a systematic way to manage them is a top priority, given humanities increasing urbanization. Here, we review the main mathematical models in the literature that seek to explain the origin and emergence of urban scaling, such as similarities and connections between them. The models in this paper obtain different premises from densification, geometry on to a hierarchical organization and socio-network properties. (Excerpt)

Ribiero, Fabiano and Vinicius Netto. Urban Scaling Laws. arXiv:2404.02642. In this chapter for a Compendium of Urban Complexity, a Universidade Federal de Lavras (UFLA), Brazilphysicist and a Research Centre for Territory, Transports and Environment (CITTA), University of Porto, Portugal architect chronicle the structural presence of self-similarities across large and smaller human habitations.

Understanding how size influences the internal characteristics of a system is a crucial concern. Concepts like scale invariance, universalities, and fractals find application in biology, physics, and particularly urbanism. Relative size impacts how cities form and function economically and socially. For example, what are the pros and cons of larger cities? Do they offer more opportunities and higher incomes than smaller ones? To address such issues, we utilize theoretical tools from scaling theory to quantify how a system's behavior changes across macro to micro scales. Drawing parallels with biology and spatial economics, this chapter explores recent discoveries, ongoing progress, and new questions regarding urban scaling.

Rickles, Dean. Econophysics and the Complexity of Financial Markets. Hooker, Cliff, ed.. Philosophy of Complex Systems. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 2011. For this encyclopedia, the University of Sydney physicist and philosopher achieves a current survey of this 21st century reconception of commerce that courses from neoclassic models to complex systems, probability distributions, statistical physics, natural laws, and onto scaling, universality, and criticality, all very organic one might add.

It is unfortunate that a more precise definition of a ‘complex system’ is still not agreed upon: there are almost as many definitions as there are discussions….However, it is reasonably safe to assume a kernel that these diverse accounts share. This kernel involves a triplet of characteristics (I hesitate to call them necessary conditions):
• A (unit) complex system must contain many subunits. • These subunits must be interdependent (at least some of the time). • The interactions between the subunits must be nonlinear. (534)

If we are talking about an adaptive complex system then we should add the following condition: • The individual subunits modify their properties and behaviour with respect to a changing environment resulting in the generation of new systemic properties that ‘reflect’ the change that the environment has undergone. If we are talking about a self-organizing adaptive complex system then we should also add: • The individual subunits modify their own properties and behaviour with respect to the properties and behaviour of the unit system they jointly determine — in other words, there is ‘downward causation’ operating from the systemic properties to the subunits’ properties. (535)

Rickles, Dean. Econophysics for Philosophers. Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics. 38/4, 2007. A review essay of 11 books on nonlinear economics, broadly conceived, which provides a good tutorial to the nascent field. But, as the quotes convey, an inferred realization of a constant, nested recurrence from atoms to Amazon has not yet been appreciated.

Moreover, I think that philosophers should take a good look at the field since it is, prima facie, rather shocking to see how concepts, methods, and models are being taken from such areas of physics as condensed matter physics, quantum field theory and gauge theory and applied to financial markets. (950) In physics, scaling laws are explained (in some cases) via collective behavior amongst a large number of mutually interacting components. The components in this financial case would simply be the market’s ‘agents’ (traders, speculators, hedgers, etc.). The idea is that in statistical physics, systems that consist of a large number of interactings parts often are found to obey ‘universal laws’ – laws independent of microscopic details, and dependent on just a few macroscopic parameters. (954)

Rosser, J. Barkley. Complex Evolutionary Dynamics in Urban-Regional and Ecologic-Economic Systems. Berlin: Springer, 2011. The James Madison University mathematical economist has pioneered the reconception of cities and commerce from linear equilibrium models to a theoretical sense of their innate organic development and livelihood. For example, Chapter Section 4.3 Self-Organizing Regional Morphogenesis contains 4.3.3 A Fractal Synergesis – that is to say, biotas, villages, and neighborhoods are alive and well. Rosser deosn’t say something is going on by itself, as if from an independent source, but achieves a significant revision of biosphere and econosphere in terms of living systems science.

Current economic theory largely depends upon assuming that the world is fundamentally continuous. However, an increasing amount of economic research has been done using approaches that allow for discontinuities such as catastrophe theory, chaos theory, synergetics, and fractal geometry. The spread of such approaches across a variety of disciplines of thought has constituted a virtual intellectual revolution in recent years. This book reviews the applications of these approaches in various subdisciplines of economics and draws upon past economic thinkers to develop an integrated view of economics as a whole from the perspective of inherent discontinuity. (Publisher)

Rozenfeld, Hernan, et al. Laws of Population Growth. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 105/18702, 2008. An international team that includes Michael Batty and Eugene Stanley propose a new “City Clustering Algorithm” which improves on prior methods for gauging urban densities. As a result, an underlying dynamics can be assessed, which: “…suggest the existence of scale-invariant growth mechanisms acting at different geographical scales.”

Rybski, Diego, ed. Compendium of Urban Complexity: Switzerland: Springer, 2025.. Switzerland: Springer, 2025. Due in May, the editor is a director at the Leibniz Institute of Ecological Urban and Regional Development, Dresden, Germany.

This book brings together key findings, insights, and theories at the intersection of two disciplines – city science and complex systems. It features a curated collection of chapters contributed by emerging scholars conducting cutting-edge research in complexity science, interdisciplinary physics, and quantitative geography. The compendium is tailored to a thematically diverse audience, spanning quantitative fields such as statistical and mathematical physics, as well as socially-focused domains such as geography and urban planning.

Samanidou, E., et al. Agent-based Models of Financial Markets. Reports on Progress in Physics. 70/3, 2007. A universal scaling-law appears in stock trade activity similar to many other multi-agent systems.

Samaniego, Horacio and Melanie Moses. Cities as Organisms: Allometric Scaling of Urban Road Networks. Journal of Transport and Land Use. 1/1, 2008. Universidad Austral de Chile and University of New Mexico systems scientists apply recent Metabolic Scaling Theories that hold for unicellular and multicellular metazoans to human neighborhood and metropolitan settlements and find a strong, correspondent similarity. The same optimum, nonlinear, fractal, physiological networks necessarily grace both nested, disparate realms. However might we learn to avail ourselves to thusly reinhabit the world as a viable homeostatic, multi-social protocellular organism?

Just as the cardiovascular network distributes energy and materials to cells in an organism, urban road networks distribute energy, materials and people to locations in cities. (21)

Sambrook, Roger and Robert Voss. Fractal Analysis of U.S. Settlement Patterns. Fractals. 9/3, 2001. The same topologies that cluster galaxies apply to the spatial growth of towns and cities.

Samson, Paul and David Pitt. The Biosphere and Noosphere Reader. New York, Routledge, 1999. A well-documented and representative survey of classic and current perceptions of a Gaian unity of life and collective mind.

Schellnhuber, H. J. Earth Systems Analysis and Management. Eckart Ehlers and Thomas Krafft, eds. Understanding the Earth System. Berlin: Springer, 2001. This article takes the perspective of a sentient bioplanet which is on the way to achieving its own surveillance, codification, sustainability, as if it might awaken to self-realization.

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